Friday, 30 October 2015

Have you missed us?

We missed our usual Friday posting because we were getting ready for a few days away in Cambridgeshire. All four of us managed to co-ordinate taking parts of our annual leave and we had a lovely time together. We had two adjacent rooms in a slightly soulless hotel. It was always a slightly anxious time when the six of us went to eat our breakfast or evening meal there but Nicola and Alice behaved really well and we were proud of them. It did surprise us that so many other parents allowed their children to run around or make a lot of noise instead of expecting them to sit fairly quiet and fairly still when eating in public. We must be stricter parents than we realised.Nicola and Alice understand the idea of taking turns and so when we did something that was more for the parents than the children, like visiting the cathedral, they would ask us , "Is it Mummy's turn now?". That made me smile every time. The two of them spent ages looking for God inside the cathedral but (just about!) accepted my explanation that he must have been hiding from them.As always Ella and I had 1 complete day "off duty" when we went off on our own leaving the two little ones to be looked after by the two Dads. This is good for all six of us - just for different reasons!

In the morning we met up with London based Cert in a Skirt in St Albans. She was
practically abandoned by her parents when she turned 18. Her parents went off
to the Gulf at almost zero notice and without making any proper financial provision for her. She
saw one of our first adverts, by a “freak of chance” as she put it, and has
been a friend and subscriber ever since.Cert in a Skirt's story is one of the few that makes us feel really cross rather than sad. Her parents cold-bloodedly lied to her over a period of over 12 months including telling her a total fairy story about why the family home had been sold. They gave her just 5 weeks notice that they were leaving the country and it is hardly surprising that the parent-child relationship has never recovered.

After about an hour Pinky ( a librarian) and Natasha (a care worker) arrived to join us. We have known Pinky for ages but hadn't seen him face-to-face for some years. When he left the Children's Home he vanished to Spain for 2 years, then came back to England and started posting to the newsletter. Then he vanished again and only fairly recently got back in touch. Natasha is his long-term girl friend and it was nice to meet her for the first time in ages. We all had a light lunch together before going our separate ways.

In our case it was a few miles south to where we had tea with Crystal. When we first heard from Crystal
she was a mature student on an "Access to Higher Education" course but now she is now a
graduate with a history degree. She first found Ella and I when she was doing some
research for an academic project and she contacted us by phone for some information
on the funding attached to Looked After Children. In those days we were far more
casual about giving out our contact details, we would never do that now!The entire holiday was a great success - we even managed to avoid the rain that the weather man kept mentioning.